On January 15, local time, the 2021/22 FIS Snowboard U-Track World Cup ended in Lex, Switzerland. At Lex Park, which has the largest U-pool in the world, we also saw the most neat World Cup lineup of the season.
Pyeongchang Winter Olympic women's champion Chloe King, who missed the previous two World Cups, finally made her international snow league debut this season, and the men's competition "gathered" Pyeongchang Winter Olympic gold and silver bronze medalists Sean White, Hirano Bumeng and Scotty James, which was also the first time the three of them competed in the Beijing cycle.
In the end, Chloe Kim and Pingye Bumeng won the women's and men's championships respectively, and the three Chinese players who were shortlisted for the women's finals, Wu Shaotong, Cai Xuetong and Liu Jiayu, ranked 6th to 8th respectively. Cai Xuetong won the women's championship of the women's group this season with three World Cup championships and a 7th place result.
Although the lineup of Lex Station is luxurious, there are not many players who can successfully complete two slides in the final, and Wu Shaotong, Cai Xuetong, and Liu Jiayu all have their own mistakes in the two slides. However, for Cai Xuetong, who has stood on the podium in the previous two World Cups, winning the 7th place at Lex did not affect her lead in the World Cup table. Cai Xuetong finally beat Japan's Tomitase with 216 points and won the "Crystal Ball" trophy for the seventh time in her career.
After the World Cup Tongshan station, Cai Xuetong said that he looked forward to performing well in the pre-Winter Olympic games and allowing himself to meet the home Winter Olympics with confidence. This season, in addition to participating in the World Cup and winning the championship, Cai Xuetong also won the third place in the professional event Fluxus Tour, even if Cai Xuetong failed to end successfully at lex station, but such a result is good enough for her who did not participate in the epidemic last year, and basically achieved the preparation goal she set for herself.
The scores of the World Cup Bronze Mountain Station and the Fluxus Tour also prove that Cai Xuetong, who successfully completed all the actions, is still a strong contender for the Winter Olympic medal. Liu Jiayu and Wu Shaotong, who won silver medals at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, have had their form up and down during this World Cup season, and if they want to go further in the rankings at the Beijing Winter Olympics, they also need to ensure at least one complete and error-free slide.
Chloe Jin, who reached the top podium at Laax, is still a popular candidate for the Beijing Winter Olympics. Although Chloe King's participation in the Beijing cycle is not frequent, he still maintains a difficulty and stability that is difficult for others to match. In her first skate at Lex, Chloe King has completed the difficulties of turning 1080 degrees inside and 1080 degrees outside, and she has more movement reserves that have not yet been shown on the field, which allows us to expect more from her performance at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Chloe King's good form also means that the rest of the players may be fighting more for other positions on the podium, and the opponents that Cai Xuetong and Liu Jiayu will encounter at the Winter Olympics are not only world champion Castellet and American Mastro, but also the Japanese women's team players who have performed well in the three World Cups.
Among them, Tomita Seta won the podium in both the Bronze Mountain and Mammoth Mountain races, her sister Ryuki Tomita won the championship at the Mammoth Mountain Station, and the youngster Mitsuki Ono, who was born in 2004, completed a 1080-degree reverse turn at lex station and won the second place. Compared with the first season of the Beijing cycle, the overall competitiveness of today's Japanese women's team has indeed improved a lot.